Bernie Sanders Has EARNED My Loyalty

Now that it’s certain Bernie Sanders will declare himself a candidate for POTUS in 2020, I see Democrats hauling out the dirty laundry from the 2016 election cycle, bemoaning the “fact” (ha ha ha ha ha) that he stole the election out from under poor unprotected Hillary Clinton, therefore saddling us with Trump.

 

Has no one been reading 2016 election postmortems or watching the news about Mueller’s indictments and convictions or thinking independently at all ?

 

What Brought Hillary Down

 

1. Most of the Superdelegates declared for HRC before the race had even begun, so who got shafted? It wasn’t Hillary!
2. Russia and the GOP appear to have colluded (for decades, mind you) to demonize Hillary
3. Hillary is Republican Lite. She is not a progressive, FDR-style  Democrat
4. All sides demonized Hillary: the right, the left, and far too much of the middle
5. She admits she wasn’t a viral charismatic candidate, being more a policy wonk than a personality. (This shouldn’t matter but it does since so many voters want to be inspired and entertained as well as informed)
6. She didn’t go out to meet the people; she relied on big corporate donors and ultra-wealthy fundraising gatherings for her campaign funds
7. She was incapable of appearing down-to-earth, relaxed and relational. She appeared to be seeking transactions, not relationships.

 

Hillary Clinton’s candidacy was shoved at us. (Not that she wasn’t worthy to be so shoved; she was qualified to be President six ways from Sunday. I didn’t like her hawkishness, the fact that she was Republican Lite, or that she was in bed with Wall Street and other fat cats, but I admitted that she was superbly well-qualified for the Oval Office.)

The American people don’t like candidates shoved at them. We like to consider the entire field and decide who best represents us and will advocate for our needs from the bully pulpit.

 

Bernie campaigned for Hillary after the primaries and let his followers know he was voting for her and against Donald Trump.

 

More than 3 million Americans voted for her than voted for Donald Trump even though a great many of them (I’m among them) were deeply disturbed and disappointed by the way in which she became the front runner. The vast majority of Bernie’s supporters cast their votes for her and against Donald Trump because the alternative was unthinkable. 

 

So stop believing Bernie gave us Trump. Look at what Mueller is dredging out of the swamp. There’s your answer!

 

So  let’s please overcome our animosity against Senator Sanders, whose policies we love, and stop rewriting history to fit our frustrations.

 

Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America right now, and he has been since 2016 (now that Barack Obama is out of the picture; but even before Obama was retired, Bernie was a rock star in the political world. Look it up yourself. I’ll wait. I’m not delivering “fake news” here!)

 

I’m a die-hard Democrat but I think my party has been co-opted by oligarchs, plutocrats and corporations for a very long time. Yes, some of them are “good” overlords, like Naick Hanauer, Warren Buffett, George Soros and the like, folks who espouse the same policies I do.

 

But NO political party should be beholden to oligarchs, plutocrats and corporations (I think Hanauer, Buffett and Soros would agree with this) and I want to see this changed. It is the fly in the ointment that pollutes everything around it.

 

Bernie Sanders has been a progressive FDR-style Democratic Socialist his entire political career. He has been a better Democrat than most Democrats, in fact!

 

Bernie has never changed his focus. And now that other progressive Democrats are coming aboard who are with him — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others — I know he and they will carry us toward the dawn of a better day so we can tackle climate change, higher education for all who want it, a livable minimum wage, and all of our other pressing needs so we can all breathe a little easier.

 

The world is on fire. (Even the kids know it! Need a primer on this? Watch!)

 

It’s time to pull out all the stops and bring people on board who feel the urgency.

 

Bernie Sanders has my vote.